I made an FPS that runs on 1980s hardware and you can get onto any surface you can see over. You just walk. Halo 4 or whatever introduced “mantling” and it was like, oh, why didn’t everybody think of this? Its absence now highlights any game with unimpressive obstacles. Even the Half-Life machinema series Freeman’s Mind highlights how Gordon should be able to chin-up over some ledges and skip whole chapters.
Another example specific to Half-Life: the PS2 version’s long-jump module is a double jump. You just jump in midair and it fires off. No wonky crouch-then-jump command. Movement isn’t any less deep or complex. It’s just simplified to the point you can do it by pushing a button twice instead of playing piano.
I’ve always hated it and thought it was a stupid untuitive mechanic that didn’t map to anything in real life. It also looks equally stupid in multiplayer when you see player character models spasm their way up a ledge during a crouch jump. It’s an old school mechanic that I am glad is going out of fashion due to better vault controls.
like a simulation of pulling your legs up in real life.
You don’t pull your legs up in real life though, you use your hands to vault onto something. You can’t just swap stances in mid air without holding onto anything. Even if you were talking about box jumps, like the kinds you normally do at a gym, it still isn’t anything remotely like a crouch jump. Also anyone doing a box jump in an actual combat situation just looks goofy.
Any time a game explicitly has a tutorial for crouch jump, my immersion is completely broken. I am instantly reminded that it is a game.
The highest standing jump world record looks almost exactly like a crouch jump, except they start the jump crouched, uncrouch, then end up crouched again, so I don’t think it’s fair to say there’s no real world equivalent.
I love it and I notice when it’s absent. The coolest thing about games as an art medium is player choice and the potential to “break the game”. Playing in a way the developer didn’t intend is probably consistently the most fun I have in games, and advanced movement tech like crouch jumps almost always creates unintentional whackiness.
Do you think your age when you played it has anything to do with disliking it? It was leaps beyond anything else available at the time, and I was young and impressionable, so even for its faults it was amazing.
i wasn’t very old but i was experienced enough i guess. i was used to games starting immediately for example. while the first time going through the intro is an impressive tech demo, it becomes quickly obvious that it’s not meant to be replayed. similarly to Bethesda game intros, it sucks and it’s bad for a videogame.
physics were also impressive at times but it led to slippery controls which wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t require platforming. it’s frustrating and unforgivably so in my opinion. compared to much older games like quake and doom which had incredibly precise controls, it just felt floaty.
but the absolute worst was the crouch jump. Jesus Christ what were they thinking‽ unnecessarily complicated, unintuitive, badly implemented and barely even used so it was also unnecessary in general.
there were lots of technical feats and design choices that were good, mind you. level design was pretty good. enemy designs were cool. the mystery elements were very cool.
Depth to movement mechanics is one of the differences between mediocre and great first person games. Look at counter strike movement over the years. Players have extracted everything from the quirks of that engine, the game is better for it, and the skill ceiling for movement alone is enormous. That skill ceiling is important. Crouch jumps in particular have been in pretty much every game i can think of since i learned halo on the og xbox. even if they aren’t explicitly used by the game designers, there is often tricks you can do to exploit campaigns in fun ways, or maneuver the multiplayer with a higher level of expertise than others. Thats fun. Competitive but fun.
Compared to games where every mechanic is dead simple and everyone can do it, its more just rock paper scissors at that point. The designer gave a specific movement ability, you counter it with some other ability they designed. Its boring to me.
I think it’s just a specific setpiece moment. You can see the texture of the rocks closer to the player on the right and they are pretty typical for FNV
It never bothered me in Source games, but I don’t really care for it as a mechanic. Specifically in Half-Life, I don’t like how it overlaps with long jumping either. (Jump then crouch to crouch jump, crouch then jump to long jump.)
But I wouldn’t want it in other games because manteling is a superior mechanic. Mantelling is usually when you can hold down the jump key close to a ledge to grab it and pull yourself up, rather than jumping. In most games that have it, mantelling into a smaller space (a vent or pjpe) auto-crouches as you enter.
It allows for making longer jumps, exciting last moment saves, pulling yourself up into small spaces, simpler climbing mechanics, and more. It’s just a better, more intuitive mechanic that replaces long jumps and crouch jumps and requires no extra key presses.
I actually really dislike Manteling it feels like a quick time event, it’s easy and takes away any skill from the jump. The animation quickly gets repetitive. In some games where cinematics and being epic are the focus it definitely shines.
Crouch Jumping isn’t great either. It’s janky and should remain in source games only. However I’m so used to it that I try crouch jump anytime I jump onto a crate or something.
If you want two seperate jump distance have normal run speed jump and sprint + jump. Or slide jump
In counter strike it’s just a game mechanic, and if you can’t do it there are certain positions you can’t get into, or you’d have to go a longer way round. Past a certain rank pretty much everyone can do it reliably but it’s definitely a barrier for new players
I play on a 1.6 server full of boomers and theyre constantly banning people for doing this. Theyre completely unhinged and will ban you if you kill them too much.
Thats the only time ive ever had anyone get angry about it. Its been part of the game since the beginning and was always used it competitive play.
Are they just mad because they can’t do it? I haven’t been playing as long as 1.6 (I picked up counter-strike around 2016) but I can do it and pretty much everyone I queue with has figured it out. I always felt like counter strike mechanics are fairly in-depth and compared to things like counter-strafing and recoil control this was fairly easy to figure out
Theyre just old and cranky old guys “just want to play casually” but are always trying really hard. The only reason I play there is because its active and its not full of awps
Heh, I know a few people that say they want to play casually, just because it helps save face when they’re not very good (not to say that’s what your guys are doing but yk)
Debatable. Half-Life’s early development was a hot mess until they started building around how things actually worked. Like, they had the soldier AI, and it completely fell apart outside of some corridor-heavy environments… so they remade all the soldier encounters to take place in hallways and crate mazes.
The crouch jump was almost certainly an accidental invention. But its inclusion in the game was surely devs going ‘this is neat, let’s make it a whole thing.’
I think we need a Plank button, for those times when you need to sniper shot someone in the prone position whilst in midair. Think of the possibilities:
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